Based on a True Story’s second season takes the story in a completely different direction. It’s no longer centered around a podcast with an anonymous couple interviewing a serial killer. The podcast was canceled by modern-day “cancel culture,” and the status of the couple and the killer hang in the balance.
Thus, the plot takes some interesting twists and turns, one of which is a storyline about trying to rehabilitate Matt (Tom Bateman). The belief this could work, however, seems far more unlikely than even the non-sensical (albeit highly entertaining) nature of the plot itself.
Release Date June 8, 2023
Seasons 2
Writers Craig Rosenberg
Who Is Matt in ‘Based on a True Story’?
When Ava (Kaley Cuoco) and Nathan (Chris Messina) have plumbing issues at home, they hire a plumber to fix it. The handsome young man named Matt happens to know who Nathan is and all about his once-famous tennis career, which pleases Nathan. This is especially so since the couple are at a vulnerable point in their lives with their careers flailing and a baby on the way.
Matt loves Nathan and knows a lot about his career, and Nathan is eating up all the attention. They agree on a deal to fix the toilet, and Nathan goes out to a bar with Matt one night, the start of a lovely friendship. The next morning, news breaks that another young woman was murdered by a suspected serial killer, and Nathan recognizes the victim from the bar. Given Ava’s obsession with true crime podcasts, she starts putting pieces together and figures out the identity of the killer known as the Westside Ripper: it’s Matt.
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Terrified that they’re in the presence of a killer, Ava has a ridiculous idea. Get Matt to agree to be interviewed anonymously for a podcast talking about the murders and his motivations. Ava and Nathan secretly run the podcast, it will go viral, and they’ll make a killing. All their money problems will go away, and they won’t call the police on Matt. But he also has to promise to stop killing.
The plan in no way sounds viable, but desperate times sometimes cloud judgment, which is precisely what happens in this case. Matt eventually agrees, but he takes over the podcast. He views it as his podcast, a way to get the attention he so desperately craves, the control he needs. He even stages a stunt at a CrimeCon convention that puts them at risk, but it also attracts massive attention for the podcast. They’re finally going viral. When the podcast is canceled for obvious moral and ethical reasons, Matt wants to kill again for “new material.” He has gone off the rails, and when a friend winds up dead, Ava and Nathan are beside themselves. They’re in too deep, and Matt can’t be controlled. What do they do next?
The Problem With Matt in Season 2 of ‘Based on a True Story’
When the story picks up in Season 2, Ava and Nathan have found a temporary solution: they sell their new Malibu beach house and use the money to send Matt to a wellness center in Mexico. The hope is to rehabilitate him. Somehow, Nathan and Ava felt that therapy could help Matt control his murderous urges, much like it might help someone deal with an addiction to drugs or alcohol. It’s true that, in some ways, being a killer is rooted in addiction. But can a psychopathic serial killer really be rehabilitated? This is a completely different ballgame. Addiction to substances or behaviors isn’t the same as being a remorseless killer.
Yet when Nathan frantically travels to Mexico to see Matt when he learns Ava’s younger sister Tory (Liana Liberato) is there with him, he sees a new Matt. This is a calm, man-bun-wearing, gentle soul who claims to be a better person now. Matt has found a way to control his urges. He’s experiencing an awakening. He even informs Nathan that he wasn’t the one who killed Ruby (Priscilla Quintana) after all, despite what everyone thought.
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The series does the right thing by eventually showing that Matt isn’t rehabilitated at all. Sure, he shows restraint at times, like when he doesn’t act on a desire to slit the throat of a snotty tennis club mom who is talking his ear off. But it’s only a matter of time before he can’t take it anymore. All it takes is a certain situation to lure him back into killing.
But then, the show tries to take Matt to a Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) from Dexter level by having him show a conscience when he goes out of his way to save Ava and Nathan, much like Dexter saved his sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) in that show. He has grown a liking to them, something uncharacteristic of a serial killer who has no remorse for their actions. That storyline might have worked and been believable for Dexter, but the iconic vigilante killer character was an exception, not a rule.
The true Matt emerges once again when, after saving his friends’ lives, he captures their kidnapper with plans to possibly torture or kill her. The man bun and linen shirt-wearing guy from Mexico was just a façade. It was never going to last. Matt was never going to change. Thus, the real Matt problem in Based on a True Story isn’t necessarily the suggestion that Matt could ever change. It’s why Ava, Nathan, and especially Tory believed he ever would.
The Problem Isn’t So Much with Matt
The people around Matt treated this killer as though he was someone they could control and change. None of them come across as unintelligent people. Even in the most desperate of situations, they could not possibly have believed that Matt would bend to their will and do as they say. It’s baffling, for example, that Ava and Nathan didn’t think ahead to figure out that the second they launched the podcast, they were now publicly implicated in Matt’s actions. Even if their identities weren’t officially known, he now had the perfect opportunity to blackmail them.
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Despite his good looks, charms, and how he manipulates them, especially Nathan, any sane person would recognize that Matt isn’t going to change. That’s especially so for someone like Ava, who has a serious infatuation with true crime and has studied serial killers for sport. Tory’s entire storyline about believing that Matt was a changed man, happy to shrug off the heinous things he did in the past as the “old him,” is totally unbelievable.
Matt is so charming, convincing, and manipulative that he is able to convince people that he isn’t a cold-blooded killer, even those who know for a fact that he is a cold-blooded killer. Not all Matt’s actions track with how a true serial killer would be, and any suggestion that a trip to a wellness center in Mexico might magically rehabilitate it is ridiculous. But it’s the actions of those around him that are most problematic and make viewers relieved that Based on a True Story isn’t actually based on a true story. Stream Based on a True Story on Peacock.
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